Evidence of a Haunting at Pitcher Cemetery

 

Pitcher Cemetery is located at 3306 Blue Ridge Blvd. North of Pitcher Road in Independence, Missouri

This family burial plot for the Thomas Pitcher family established in 1830, is also the final resting place for some who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Many Civil War soldiers who perished in battle nearby in 1864 are buried in a mass grave.  Another mass grave is in the cemetery, which contains pioneers who perished from the Cholera epidemic of 1849—1851.  Most of the grave markers are simple standing rocks without engraving.  It is estimated that over 200 people are buried here.

Visitors have reported noises in the trees, glowing balls of light, and a floating apparition.

A recent investigation would prove fruitful. I visited the site with fellow investigators Jean Walker and Devin Listrom so we could obtain evidence that spirits still roam the site. We were not disappointed. As we arrived there was a sense of multiple spirits in the area, and this was confirmed by Devin's dowsing rods. Next, I was pulled to a particular grave of a Revolutionary Soldier and placed a Rem Pod on top of the tombstone. I asked the question, "Is there a spirit here?" and the Rem Pod began to respond with multiple beeps. All the lights began to blink. With each question, there was the same response. Devin, who is also a medium, and I heard a man speaking and he told us that he had been murdered for a small bag of gold coins in his pocket. 

Oddly, the man has the same last name as Devin's mother's maiden name, and she is researching to see if there is a connection. 

Jean Walker walked further back into the cemetery and was drawn to a strange object placed between two tree limbs. I was also drawn to look at it from a distance, and we feel that there is a spirit residing there. 

There are no hours posted and no locked gate, so it appears that this cemetery is open at all hours. 
 
-------------------------------------------
Margie Kay is the director of Quest Paranormal Investigation Group and author of Haunted Independence and Gateway to the Dead: A Ghost Hunter's Field Guide. See more info at www.margiekay.com. 

Mysterious Spook Lights of Missouri

The state of Missouri has its share of anomalies- high numbers of UFO sightings, haunted sites, and paranormal weirdness, but the so-called spook lights, which remain unexplained to this day are among the strangest phenomena.

In Clarks Fork, an area south of I-70 in mid-Missouri accessible only by dirt roads, is one spot where strange lights have appeared. It is said that in the early 1800’s a man built a cabin near a spring and lived as a hermit. One day some hunters came upon the cabin but the hermit was gone, leaving a cold fire and his dogs. 

According to the book The Haunted Bookslick, people saw a ball of light near the hermit’s cabin which appeared to be looking in the windows. 

The ball of light would play with the neighbor’s dogs and in some cases scared them. Some families reported that the spook light would shoot through the woods, making a high-pitched noise, and even setting trees on fire, which would be found undamaged the next day.  One man reported that the light came close to his house and that he could see figures and hear talking inside the light. This light was reported into the 20^th Century, but perhaps it is still there even though no one is around.

The Knob Noster Ghost Light, off Route 50 right next to Knob Noster State Park can been seen on stormy nights. Reportedly, a slave disappeared and his owner acted very suspicions about it, making the townspeople believe that he murdered the man. The hermet was killed by a lightning bolt as he walked along a ridge on Knob Noster looking for the source of a light he saw on the hill which looked like a lantern. When the hermit was discovered, he had a look of horror on his face, as if he had just seen a ghost. Shortly after people started to report seeing a lantern moving along the ridge during storms, and it still appears today, over 140 years later.

Source: Wikipedia

The Hornet Spooklight AKA Joplin Spook Light, Devil’s Jack-O’-Lantern, Ozark Spook Light, Ghost Light, or Hollis Light appears along a short stretch of road between southwestern Missouri and southeast Kansas and Oklahoma, near the small town of Hornet, Missouri. The area is known as the Devil’s Promenade. The earliest reports trace back 200 years by the local Quapaw Indians. Some say it is the ghost of a Civil War Soldier, others say it is the ghost of a Native American in search of his lost head. In yet another tale, the lights are the remains of a white farmer and Native man who killed each other.

The light appears along the road, in yards, and in fields. People report seeing it as different colors including blue, yellow, red, orange, and green, or even as a color-changing orb. The shape is usually reported to be that of a ball or lantern.  Sometimes more than one light appears at the same time, and some people report the lights following them alongside of their vehicle.

The Spooklight was so popular that there used to be a museum dedicated to the light. Leslie Robertson operated the museum where he offered booklets, photographs and a viewing platform for people to observe the light.  His interest was spurred when in 1906 at the age of 14 he saw the light for the first time. It wouldn’t be his last, as he said he saw it thousands of times.

In 1936 an article appeared in the Kansas City Star about the light, and the legend of the light appeared in the 1947 book Ozark Superstitions by Vance Randolph, a well-known folklorist. One man shot the light one day with his 30-30 rifle, yet it seemed unaffected.

According to Troy Taylor of prairieghosts.com, Resident Arthur Holbrook said in an interview he had first seen the light in 1905. A local Native man born in 1897 said that he had seen the light as a child and that his family said it had been around for generations. 

The light has been investigated by multiple groups, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who studied the light in 1946, but could find no reasonable explanation for the phenomenon.

Recently several paranormal research groups tried to get evidence of the light and were able to capture video of it. However, when approached from both sides at the same time one group was unable to see the light as they got close to it, while it still remained visible to the group on the other side.

Source: News Photographer Marta Churchwell

Professor Allen Rice, Ph.D. of the University of Central Oklahoma did an investigation of the spook light with his team called the Boomers. He said they found the explanation for the lights as being headlights and taillights, 9 miles west of the location. However, this would not explain the sightings that occurred prior to vehicles or roads.

 

In the summer of 1970 I got to experience the Hornet Spooklight first-hand. I was 14 years old. My father took our family out to Spooklight road to see if we could see the spook light. As we drove along the quiet, dark road, two yellow/white lights appeared to the right of the car. One was the size of a basketball, the other was the size of a softball. The smaller light went inside the car window in the back seat where I was sitting with my brother and sister, moved slowly, softly illuminating the interior of the car and ourselves, and shot out the other window. The second larger light went in front of the car, causing my father to stop the vehicle. Both lights then joined back together and shot off into the woods on the opposite side of the road. We all agreed that the lights acted like they were under intelligent control. I found out later that this same scenario occurred to other people. (see my article about my own investigation of the Spook Light in 2017)

The Marley Woods Lights. Marley Woods is the name given to an undisclosed location in South Missouri by internationally known UFO and Paranormal researcher Ted Phillips. It is at approximately the same line of latitude as the Hornet Spook Light. The residents don’t want to be disturbed by hordes of people, so they would only agree to letting the site be investigated if the location was kept secret. The site, which includes many farms and acres of property, is a hotspot for paranormal activity with UFO sightings, crop circles, unseen forces that push people, hauntings, and even bigfoot sightings.

One of the most misunderstood phenomenon in this area is the strange balls of lights- or spook lights that appear in the area, and have been reported by residents for many generations. In 1969 children playing on a trampoline were startled when they saw a glowing white ball of light that hovered in a nearby tree. The tree died within two weeks. Many people have seen these strange lights, both far away and close up. In my opinion they closely resemble the Hornet Spook Light in appearance and movement. 

Dr. Harley Rutledge and a team of Physics major student volunteers investigated this location after the wave of UFO and unexplained lights sightings in and near Piedmont, MO. He wrote about it in his now out of print book Project Identification, in which he described that the lights behaved in a way that defied known physics.

In 2007, Chuck Zukowski and Debbie Ziegelmeyer with the Center for Trace Evidence SIU Team and Ted Phillips investigated the site and obtained video of the object – visit https://youtu.be/T9O8WLVYs3A to see the video. The SIU team revisited the site many times, only to come up with no explanation for the lights. 

Copyright 2016-2021 by Margie Kay

_____________________________

Margie Kay is an author and paranormal researcher. She is the host of Un-X News Radio and is the director of the OZ Inter-dimensional Communication Institute. Contact her at margiekay06@yahoo.com. 

The Very Haunted Lemp Mansion in St. Louis Never Ceases to Amaze

By Margie Kay

The Lemp Mansion, St. Louis, Missouri   Photo: "Lemp-mansion" by MattHucke - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lemp-mansion.jpg#/media/File:Lemp-mansion.jpg

I had the good fortune to visit and explore the Lemp Mansion in 2012 along with my friend Debbie Ziegelmeyer. After having lunch in the restaurant on the lower level, we moved upstairs to complete our much-anticipated ghost hunt, with equipment in hand. Before mentioning the results, however, lets begin with some history of the place.

The home was built in 1868 by St. Louisian Jacob Feickert. William J. Lemp, owner of the largest brewery in St. Louis, and his wife, Julia, moved into the mansion in 1876. The Lemp family  lived in the house until 1949 when Charles Lemp committed suicide.

William Lemp, the son of a successful grocer and German beer brewer, continued in his father’s footsteps, expanding the company. In 1911, the Lemps contracted major renovations to the home to include conversion of some spaces into offices for the Lemp Brewery.

William brewed and bottled his beer in the same facility to meet growing demand for the product. In 1878 he installed the first refrigeration machine in an American brewery, following with refrigerated railway cars, in order to transport the beer across the States. Not long after, Lemp Beer was sold worldwide.

In 1892, the William J. Lemp Brewing Company was founded from the Western Brewery with William as President, his son William Jr. as Vice-President, and his son Louis as Superintendent.
   William J. "Billy" Lemp, Jr., born on August 13, 1867, went to St. Louis University and then studied the art of brewing. However, it was William Sr.'s fourth son, Frederick, born in 1873, whom he wanted to take over the company. But Frederick had heart issues and died on December 12, 1901 of heart failure due to complication of diseases.

William Sr. became distraught over his son’s death, and his health slowly deteriorated. To make matters worse, his best friend Frederick Pabst died on February 1, 1904. On the morning of February 13, 1904, William Lemp killed himself by gunshot, and died at 10:15 a.m.

On November 7, 1904, William J. "Billy" Lemp, Jr., took over the brewing company as president. Billy had married Lillian Handlan five years earlier, and they moved to a new home at 3343 South 13th Street.

Williams wife, nicknamed the “Lavender Lady” for her love of the color lavender filed for divorce in 1908, charging Billy with desertion, cruel treatment and other indignities. Lillian was granted her divorce and full custody of William III with Billy given visitation rights.

Elsa Lemp Wright, the youngest child of William Lemp Sr., filed for divorce against Thomas Wright. The divorce was granted, however, the couple reconciled and remarried in 1920. After an argument with her husband, Elsa shot herself while in bed at her home on Hortense Place.

In the 1910s The Lemp Brewery suffered when Prohibition began. The brewery was shut down and the Falstaff trademark was sold to Lemp's friend, "Papa Joe" Griesedieck. The brewery was later sold at auction for pennies on the dollar. On December 29, 1922, Billy Lemp shot himself in his office, which today is the dining room on the left side of the door on the main floor.

Billy Lemp had one son, William J. Lemp III, licensed the Lemp name to Central Breweries of East St. Louis in 1939. Central Breweries changed their name to the William J. Lemp Brewing Company, and began a grand marketing campaign resulting in increased sales of the new Lemp Beer. The contract was terminated by Ems Brewing, which bought out Lemp in 1945.

The Lemp Mansion is currently a restaurant and inn owned by the Pointer family. Historical and haunted tours are offered, and it is a venue for murder mystery dinner theatre and Halloween parties.  

The Investigation:

Debbie and I brought along a EMF meter, two digital thermometers, and two cameras for our impromptu ghost hunt rather than bringing the usual bags of equipment. We were not spending the night and didn’t have much time. However, we would not be disappointed.

While sitting in the dining room eating lunch, some movement caught my eye to the right, and I looked, thinking it was the waiter. However, there was nothing there, so I just kept on with our conversation, anticipating that we might capture a spirit in the restaurant, and kept my camera handy. A few minutes later, the movement occurred again, this time a tall dark shadow moved from across the room and through a doorway and towards the staircase in the hall. I took a quick photo but nothing appeared in the photograph.

Debbie Z. taking temperature readings
in the Elsa Lemp Suite

 

Next, we moved to the upstairs area to Elsa’s room. As we walked up the stairs I felt a presence on the staircase. Upon entering Elsa’s room, Debbie and I both felt a presence walk into the room, and I felt something walk through me. Debbie’s thermometer started to drop, and finally stopped at a full 10 degrees lower than the original room temperature. It started out at 72 degrees and dropped to 62 degrees. My EMF meter began to show high readings. I snapped a picture of the fireplace and mirror (see photo on page 11) and there are some streams of light in the mirror which I cannot explain. This type of image has appeared before in photographs of mirrors (see the article on Haunted Deadwood in a previous issue of Un-X News Magazine).

The fireplace and mirror in the Elsa Lemp
Suite with unexplained white streaks in
the mirror. Photo: Margie Kay

 

The presence stayed in the room for several minutes, then as quickly as it came, it was gone again. We took photos and moved on to the hall, and once again, I felt a presence on the stairs so snapped some photos. In one picture there is an unexplained white snake-like stream of light for which I can find no explanation. The photo taken right afterwards shows nothing. If it were something mundane it would surely have shown up in both photographs.

 Our next move was to visit the basement area. Once again, a few minutes after arriving I again felt and saw a presence - this time of an older man wearing a black suit. He was very imposing. I saw him walk from one side of the room, straight in to the bar area and walk through the closed door. I could tell that this was something he did on a regular basis.
The bartender told me that this spot is the old tunnel entrance that went underground to the brewery. Apparently, Mr. Lemp did not want to go out in public to visit his brewery every day. This is something that is not generally known, so  it confirms what I saw. There was a presence of a younger man in the room as well.

Unexplaned ghostly lights appear in the lower part of this photo of the staircase.
Photo: Margie Kay

After our visit to this site I can say that the Lemp Mansion is definitely haunted and worth a visit for any serious ghost hunter.  I’m looking forward to going back.

The Lemp Mansion offers regular and haunted tours and special events. The home may be rented for special events and parties. Every year the Lemp has a Halloween Bash which is touted as being one of the best Halloween parties in the country. Visit www.lempmansion.com for more information. 

___________________________________________

Margie Kay is a veteran paranormal and UFO investigator and author of Haunted Independence Missouri, Gateway to the Dead, and 12 more books. Visit www.margiekay.com for more information. 

 

A Haunting in St. Joseph

A Haunting by Dennis "Doc" Cromwell

It began with the Witches' Tea, a benefit for the Albrecht-Kemper museum of Art in St. Joseph Missouri. Dozens of women, all dressed as witches, attending a luncheon or dinner with the proceeds going to the museum. As part of the festivities, a number of psychics including Hally Aarhus, Jamie Zunick and myself were there to provide readings for patrons attending the event. The museum is a modern addition to the mansion of Mr. and Mrs. William Albrecht which was built in 1933 and considered haunted particularly by employees of the museum.  Photo: http://albrecht-kemper.org/visit/ The three of us were privileged to receive a guided tour of the mansion and in particular, the areas of the mansion considered to have the most "activity". We began in the library which had a definite masculine energy about it and even though I felt comfortable and at ease, my two colleagues felt a bit uneasy being there. Our next stop was the bar area where we immediately picked up the scent of cigar smoke only to be told this was Mr. Albrecht's party room, a place where he entertained his male friends and guests. We learned that employees regularly hear voices coming from this room and have odd experiences such as lights being turned on after someone turned them out, doors opening or closing. It was here that we discovered a portal which may account for the experiences. At one point, photos of the room taken with a phone camera captured the image of a face in a decorative mirror looking out at us even though we were unaware of it until after reviewing the photos. Touring the parlor where Mrs. Albrecht entertained her friends was also of interest as we all three picked up the feeling that she may have regularly held seances in the room which coincidentally was above the party room. We surmised that the portal was opened during these seances and unfortunately never closed. The most interesting and frightening experience came when we explored the basement/storage areas. One employee stated she felt uneasy at times being in her office which was in the basement. When we asked about opening a particular door, we immediately heard three distinct knocks coming from the other side of the door. When the door was opened, we realized that what we had really heard was footsteps coming up the three steps to the landing. It was at this point that one member of our team, Hally, fell from the landing causing her to land flat on her back on the floor. She immediately stated that she felt as if she had been pushed and witnesses stated that it appeared that she was indeed pushed causing the fall.  We all sensed the presence of a large male figure that we encountered later in a room employees were afraid to enter. It was here that we experienced a definite sense of danger and considering what just happened to our team member, decided to leave rather than take the chance of provoking this spirit again. Overall, we determined there were energies of three distinct time periods from the mid-1860's to the turn of the century 1900s and lastly the post Prohibition era. Our tour of the mansion was successful but the injury sustained by the team member reminded us of how much we needed to truly watch each other's backs. __________________________________________ The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art is open: Tuesday-Friday from 10am-4pm Saturday & Sunday from 1-4pm. We are closed Mondays and major holidays including Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and the day after, Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Admissions: Adults 18 & over-$5.00, Senior Citizens-$2.00, Under 18 & Students w/valid ID-$1.00, under 6 & members-FREE, Group Rates available. ______________________________________________________________ Dennis 'Doc' Cromwell is an active PRS board member. He has a weekly Open Meditation on Wednesday evenings at Spectrum, A New Age Shop. Doc is also available for private readings and can be reached at 913-645-8296

Creepy Burr Oak Woods Entity

I received the following e-mail from a man in 2006 which I just ran across again today and thought it would be a good idea to post it on the blog for everyone to see. The next time you go out to Burr Oak don’t go alone! The email is here, in entirety with no editing:

“Hello Margie:  I live here in eastern Jackson County. I heard your radio show today with you and those other ladies about ghostly apparitions and poltergeists activities and so forth. The show was interesting and thought provoking. I have an incident that happened to me about 5 years ago that I want to tell you about.

I have told very few people about this. Two of the people I told since thought I was not telling the truth or maybe I was seeing things and did not take me seriously. I was walking out at a State Park called Burr Oak Woods which I live near.

It was a very cold January day in 2001 and probably about in the nearly 20’s temp wise. I used to take long walks in the woods and I found it very relaxing. I was walking in some very dense forests in that park. After walking through a grove of big oak trees I came into a clearing.  Right in front of me was a man standing a few feet away from me.  What was strange- right away I noticed was that the man was standing with his back to me. I walked two more steps thinking he would turn and maybe say hello or something to that effect. But I immediately had a very strange feeling fall over me.

 I sensed that there was something terribly wrong.  At that point I wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible.  So I started walking away from him, always facing him.  I was really a little scared at this point because he still had his back to me.  I kept on walking backwards until I got about 100 yards or so away from him.  All this time he was still there standing with his back to me. 

When I got what I thought was a relatively safe distance away from him I put my binoculars to get a closer look at him.  As soon as I got the binoculars focused on him then at that time he turned around to look at me.  It’s as though he knew I was looking at him with the binoculars.  It was truly one of the most EVIL looking faces I ever saw on a human being. With two bad knees- I took off running and got out of the forest. One other thing that I thought was really strange: It was very cold and all this guy had on was a seemingly thin pair of slacks and a dark gray short-sleeved shirt. I remember the incident as if it were yesterday. Any thoughts or ideas as to what this might have been I would be grateful to hear. 

J. D. Grain Valley, Missouri”

Haunted Independence Missouri book released today

Just published this second edition today with updates - woohoo got it done! Now off to the next project...

 http://www.lulu.com/…/haunt…/paperback/product-23970708.html 

Paranormal researcher and psychic medium Margie Kay presents many of the most haunted locations in the city of Independence, Missouri. She and the Quest Investigation Group team investigated these sites over a period of 20 years. In this second edition of Haunted Independence, Missouri Margie discusses cases involving businesses, parks, cemeteries, and houses that are haunted by loved ones, poltergeists, shadow people and even aliens. 

ead about a haunted museum where a famous actress was born, a park with a dark shadow entity and the wife of the infamous outlaw Frank James, the lady in blue who haunts a popular restaurant, the lady in grey, and much more in this book.  Also included are a list of haunted atrractions in the area and places to go during the month of October when several locations open for haunted tours.  

Be sure to visit Independence sometime - it is very haunted!